efficient group composition Q's

I have a 70 mage and 65 warrior currently, and I was planning to RAF 2 more mages and a healer, priest or shaman, havent decided yet on the healer. I decided on the 3 mages for dps just for the simple reason of simplicity. After putting some more thought into it though, Im wondering about all the drops in instances that will not be used, mail and leather mainly. Especially if I go with the priest for heals, I will more than likely be splitting cloth 4 ways in my group. I do plan to mainly instance level the characters, so there will potentially be alot of wasted items.

Do any of you run multi class groups for this reason? It would be more efficient to utilize as many drops as possible, but is that more important than ease of play? Id imagine it could get pretty confusing and hectic with 3 different classes for dps and CC, or maybe I am wrong? I know how much I hated "hoping" for certain items to drop when I was solo playing my mage, at least with many classes, every boss will drop an item that someone can use. Any advice appreciated!

Ultimately you'll get most of your gear from emblems of heroism or crafted. Having gear versatility is nice, but really not something I concern myself with. I'd worry more about buff stacking (consider that switching a mage for a lock/DK/moonkin) would boost the remaining two mages dps by 10-13%. The main reason to go leather/mail classes is squishyness - in pve scenarios you wont be taking very much physical damage on your slaves, so there's really no incentive to spend item-points on AC (except for the fact that leather/mail-classes usually have a higher base stamina).

To be honest, in the beginning the priest or shammy or whatever healer will be rolling on clothies anyway because good healing gear wouldn't be implimented until later on in the game. But now, since blizz changed Spell damage to spell power in general, you're gonna have to figure which mana user is gonna get the item. And I'm pretty sure that most people would concentrate on gearing the healer first.

To reply to Fuzzyboy, gear-leveling shouldn't really be the first thing on your list. If you're really worried about it, try to level tailoring or leatherworking to compensate the gear loss. What's most important is what group synergy you want and what types of heals. As for advice, I wouldn't go with the priest, because then you would have a complete squishy group (2 mages and 1 priest). Shaman would probably be better because you have totems and shamans eventually wear mail. Oh, and Ankhs. That's always a plus :)

Personal opinion: Get a restro druid. :P

Chi